Hume: Postmortem politics in Pynchon &c

[jbor at bigpond.com]

Contains a brief and cogent discussion of Pynchon's use of the Tibetan
Book of the Dead, Yurok myths &c in _Vineland_; not surprisingly,
there's no mention of Dante:

'Books of the dead: Postmortem politics in novels by Mailer, Burroughs,
Acker, and Pynchon' by Kathryn Hume.
_Modern Philology_ 97.3, 2000, pp. 417-444.

Abstract: Focuses on reasons why contemporary writers resurrect ancient
ritual instructions in the West as books of the dead. View of Kathy
Acker of most Americans as spiritually dead; instructions for the dead
as metaphorically apt as cultural criticism; non-separation of
postmortem existence from life in Western thought by borrowed
eschatologies; foreign models for afterlife.

best